Fatigue Analysis of Pantograph Head Materials for Better Contact
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Date
2017-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
In general, the motorized units of the trainsets are powered through the pantograph-catenary
system. Loose of contact between the catenary and pantograph is one of the main problems in the
railway industry. This loose in contact is caused by many parameters like corrugation effect on
rail, speed of the train, load and deformation on the pantograph head material. From the above
stated causes, the damage of pantograph head material due to wear and fatigue damage accounts
the greater amount. The purpose of this paper is done to do The Fatigue Analysis of Pantograph
Head Materials for Better Contact. For this project, two pantograph head materials
copper/carbon (Cu/C) alloy and copper/carbon/rice bran ceramics (Cu/C/RBC) composite
are selected for analysis. Copper/carbon (Cu/C) is the current material used by AALRT and
copper/carbon/rice bran ceramics (Cu/C/RBC) is a newly developed composite material used for
pantograph head. The pantograph head model is done by software called CATIA and finite
element model (FEM) analysis is done by ANSYS. For this project a simple pantograph model is
used with a static structural fatigue analysis. The thermal and electrical stress is not considered
for the analysis. By applying a structural load of 148.4N on the pantograph head, the max vonmises
stress, deformation and fatigue damage results such as life, damage and safety factor is
evaluated for the two pantograph head materials. From the analysis the following results have
been found, max von mises stress, deformation and fatigue life, damage and safety factor are
9.40*10^7Pa, 0.075m, 4.7326*10^5 cycle, 2133 and 0.67135 or 1.0206 respectively for
copper/carbon (Cu/C) alloy while 9.34*10^7Pa, 0.073428m, 4.8647*10^5cycle, 2055.6 and
0.68094 or 1.1236 for Cu/C/RBC head material. From the analysis result comparison of the
pantograph head materials based on fatigue analysis, it can be concluded that the newly
developed composite material (Cu/C/RBC) is the better one with compare to the current material.
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Keywords
pantograph head, catenary, loose of contact, fatigue damage, copper carbon rice bran (RBC) strip